Silence Around Vaginal Bleeding Is Putting Women and Girls Around the World at Risk, Study Says

A new study says that the global taboo surrounding vaginal bleeding is putting women and girls around the world at risk — and it's not just misinformation or embarrassment around menstruation that causes precarious health situations for women.

The research, published in BMJ Global Health, looked at how women and girls in what the study's authors describe as "low- and middle-income countries" manage different types of vaginal bleeding at all stages of life, like menstruation, bleeding after childbirth, or bleeding due to medical issues. The study specifically discussed vaginal bleeding in self-identifying women and girls, but it's also important to remember that many people who identify as transgender, non-binary, or intersex also experience periods and other types of bleeding.

What did researchers find? They highlighted that a "culture of silence" due to fear, embarrassment, and misinformation exists around vaginal bleeding at all stages of a woman's life. These issues are further exacerbated in low- and middle-income countries by a lack of health education as well as limited access to clean water and sanitation to help women manage bleeding properly and safely. When women don't know the difference between normal and abnormal bleeding or if bleeding is a symptom of bigger medical issues, the authors wrote, this leads to further health risks.

The study also differs from previous work in the field due to its breadth, as it doesn't just focus on menstruation. "Though international development priorities have, to some extent, targeted adolescence and reproductive health related to childbearing, there is a marked silence around vaginal bleeding that girls and women experience over 40 to 50 years of the life course," author Bethany A. Caruso PhD, MPH from Emory University said in a press release.

Overall, researchers hope that their work will encourage others to define and study vaginal bleeding in low- and middle-income countries more broadly, figure out other types of vaginal bleeding that need to be addressed with women and girls, and provide the infrastructure and supplies to help all women better manage their bleeding. "There is a real gap in what we know about this issue and as public health researchers," one of the study's authors and Columbia University professor Marni Sommer told Broadly. "It's essential for us to explore and understand better."